


Sons of Inventors: Week one Day Five

by happywhiteguy



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 10:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3764548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happywhiteguy/pseuds/happywhiteguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the group moves forward tensions start to boil over and cause mass tensions between both the refugees and 3 the leaders</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sons of Inventors: Week one Day Five

_Day Five: The first night of operation skyward was a success. We successfully transported 3 people (two farmers and one child) to our destination to begin the gardening process. Borko and his group found a group of refugees led by Commander Zu Lieben. While a beautiful woman who seemed to be nothing but helpful, something was just odd about her. Yesterday was our first day without casualties or suicides or accidents. The will of the refugees is strong. They want to make their loved one’s deaths count. They did not want to be numbers involved with a failure. With the new group joining us we have 32 servicemen/women and 605 refugees. In the day I was going to take one serviceperson to the destination and a few more people. Today was a regrouping day. I trust Borko to plan the days travels well. I needed to get to know Commander Zu Lieben better though, something seems off about her._

Amare is taking his hour between waking up and preparations for the night’s journey to find Zu Lieben and to try to get acquitted with her. He zipped around the forest trying to find her and when he did she was scratching her head looking at the casualty book confused.

“Hey, why so confused Zu Lieben? Is everything okay?” I asked her inquisitively.

She responded, “Yeah, it’s weird to not write down any casualties. I don’t even know where to check that we had none in the book.”

Looking at her he said, “They didn’t even bother making a place to mark that there were no casualties. It is those little things that the kingdom did before we went out that make me think that they sent us out to die. I made my own in the upper right corner of the book. I just put a zero with a dash though it. Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill though, tell me about you Zu Lieben. I’m interested” 

“What would you like to know?” She asked

“Really anything. Start with your mission” Amare responded

She looked down and started to speak with a crack in her throat, “My group left out of Trost to go take Shiganshina. We had the biggest group of them all to take out the worst titans. The one’s that were the biggest were waiting for us. The smallest one we saw was a 12M. After one day all but 400 of my group died and of the 400 all but 80 were fatally wounded. They died the next day. Having only 80 refugees whose morals were severely damaged, all the remaining 10 servicewomen could do was try to get them to the next forest. We realized that if we were to go on the path south that the monarch set out for us, we knew we would be doomed When we got to the closest forest we decided to move northwest away from Shiganshina.

The first night we were staying at the forest we had over 36 refugee suicides and 4 servicewomen suicides. At this point it seemed hopeless, but I was not about to die, so we moved on towards the next forest. That day we found smaller and smaller titans. The biggest was a 12M. We managed to kill him but not after suffering 12 refugee casualties and 3 servicewoman casualties.

With the only soldiers left being women you can imagine that the remaining men of the group got kind of harsh and disrespectful towards us. Of the 18 men in our group had12 left. They left what little of a family they had, they left their only form of protection, and worst of all, they took their sons. We can presume they are now dead. That is why we only have 4 men in our group and a lot of women and girls we picked up and several stragglers along the way who either lost their group, their group kicked them out because they were women who tried to change the monarch’s plan because of how intentionally suicidal it was, or their group just died. As men typically are, they were too stubborn to change the plan. When we came up with our plan to travel at night we suffered much smaller casualties.

It wasn’t until last night, when we saw your group; I saw this recovery plan working out at all. I was just trying to buy days for my group and me. Borko told me about your plan and it gave all of us hope to live somewhat normal lives.  Last night was the first night we didn’t have any casualties at all, when this happened I could feel the moral going up. With that, can I ask humbly that you take one small girl from my group to the destination tonight? She lost everything and has been in the mouth of a titan, she hasn’t talked since then. She needs some hope of surviving. “

I starred at her looking down. The conflict of slightly rigging the system in order to favor one girl over the random selection we had in place. The system was meant to not favor anyone over anyone. I told her, “Let me talk to Borko.”

I zipped away to find Borko before I took off for the destination.

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            I saw Amare come to me on 3DM gear from a distance. He had 6 minutes until he had to prepare for launch. “What the hell are you doing!? You have to go up tonight. We have 6 minutes until the drawing! You need to get ready dammit.”

            Amare responded, “We need to take a little girl up for sure, Zu Lieben’s request. She has seen everything that a lot of our group members have seen and worst of all, she has been in the mouth of a titan. You and I both know how awful that is. Imagine a 4-year-old girl, having to go through that. It led us both to tears. Soldiers who have been beaten by racist old fucks in training camp, we have both looked over the walls and seen them clawing up, wanting to eat us all, and we have lost our family to monsters of our own race. Imagine all of that at the young age of four and we have her. Zu Lieben said she has yet to say a thing ever since the trip began.”

            “I’ll think about it. We have child group members who have lost everything you know. Is there some favoritism going on between you and Zu Lieben?” I responded

Infuriated, Amare yelled, “Borko, listen, it is your choice. It is your choice whether to help this little girl have some hope or not. If you want to save her go for it, if not go for it. Just know what she has been through, know everything that you and I have had to deal with and take away 14 years of our lives.”

Looking at him with all the rage built inside of me string at him in his eyes, “Amare, shut the hell up! Do you know how dangerous it is to play any favoritism within the system? Favoritism risks the one thread of order that we have of stability in this group. We don’t have much over them except for this plan we hatched together. We cannot risk that you idiot. Go prepare the damn orb, and do your job in the system. You put me in charge of making the system of choosing people to go to the destination blind. We cannot remove the blindfold. No matter what and no matter for whom. Got it?”

Without even responding, he left me to go prepare the orb, at this point the sun had been down for 1 hour and 30 minutes. It was time for night two of operation skyward.  Tonight I had never been more nervous of our plan falling apart. If that were to happen, we would all die.

About fifteen minutes later, the drawing was to happen. Tonight it was only going to be one farmer and child because we needed to fly a soldier in. It came time to draw the child who was going to go to the destination. As I reached into the helmet we picked names out of, I got the sheet of paper that had the name of the child Amare told me to pick. I know some other refugees heard Amare telling me earlier to pick her intentionally. They were murmuring about how the system was already broken because of that. If I were to call her name the refugees would riot. If I don’t the system is already broken. Amare was looking over my shoulder, so I could not call a name that wasn’t on the paper. I stood terrified, not knowing what to do. Do I sacrifice the order that is ever so fragile already? Do I call a different name and start a feud between Amare and I for the sake of the systems legitimacy? I called the name of the child and the refugees were irate.

To calm them down I passed the ticket around to show every single refugee as Amare loaded up the refugees that were called. I knew that Amare didn’t tamper with the system because the helmet was on my person at all times. This was a coincidence of much danger. The fear of God was stricken in me at that moment.

After I had shown every refugee the piece of paper, it would have been pointless to travel. I hope Amare enjoyed this. Due to his outburst earlier, he risked the small amount of stability we had in this unlikely case. The day of travel was wasted because of him.  

            I loaded up the servicewoman, the child, and the farmer we had called. They were excited to go to the destination and to see the others that had left the night before. As we floated towards the destination the little girl said something that made me feel this whole operation was worth it, “Thank you Commander Mugabe.”

            Shocked and with a tears in my eyes I saluted and responded, “You’re welcome, what is your name”

            “My name in Vakh, it means fear from the language where my ancestors came from, Zakaryan Armenia.” Vakh responded.

            “How do you know exactly where you are from?” Amare asked Vakh relatively uneasy about the answer that was to come. 

She responded as if the answer were obvious, “We kept a record for the past 100 years of my family and where they came from. “

“You know that records of the outside world are strictly forbidden by the monarch, right?” I continued, “That is considered treason.” She didn’t respond or talk for the rest of the trip.

As we approached the destination, I went to check up on the refugees I dropped off earlier that night. I asked them how did their night go and how the fields were. Overall, they said that everything was all right and that they got 4 rows of grain planted today and will get more tomorrow. They then continued to show me the layout of the garden. They laid it our proportional to what humans need in their diets. Half of the garden was going to be left as resting soil, the other half was to be: 40% grain, 30% vegetables of several varieties, and 20% was to be vine fruits, and 10% was going to be based on postharvest loss. It seemed logical and we could change it at time went on and as the occasion called for.

“You didn’t bring my sister!” The girl from the other night said. She continued, “Is she still alive!?”

I responded carefully, “When I left no one else had died.” She wanted to tell me her name, but if she did I would then end up picking favorites and that almost threw the group out of order earlier. In all of the excitement of our most recent successes, I forgot that tensions were still incredibly high and that people are looking out for themselves to survive more so than the group. Borko understood that and he was right not to play favorites. Still though, does our system have to be so ridged? Can it make a single exception to the rule later on when it is better established? I need to remember that while Borko is my friend, he is the leader of that group. I put him in that position myself. While he is ridged and almost heartless, he is doing what is best for the group. In a time of heavy tensions, order comes before favoritism. I need to remember that. If I don’t, my concerns for the people of the group will get us all killed. No matter our success, I have to remember that we are all at each other’s throats.

I came in for a landing to the forest where I last left the group and instead of the lights guiding me to the group’s location, I was guided by screams. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Zu Lieben came up to me after Amare had left, while I was preparing our plan for catching up due to the lost night of travel, and said, “You know, I was honestly surprised that you let me in your group.”

            “Why? You provided a ton of ODM gas, blades, and mechanics. Also your group was heavily covered as far as food went. It would’ve been stupid for me not to.” I continued looking down at the map while she continued on.

            “Stop acting so cold! You know it’s okay to show me some emotion besides robot right? You can do things out of your heart you know!”  She yelled at me.

            “Doing things out of my heart doesn’t serve the purpose I am here for,” I continued relatively annoyed, “I am here to keep a systemic order. If I fail even once, all of us could possibly die. Now if you don’t leave me alone and go do your damn guard duty I will personally kick you out of this group for disturbing the order. It’s your fault we are here and not walking. Trying to convince Amare to convince me to corrupt the system. You’ll get us all fucking killed Zu Lieben.” As she was opening her mouth to probably say some snarky comment about how heartless I am we heard a scream coming from behind us. As she and I went to the area in which it came from we found somebody was murdered via knifing. This night has been the longest ever since we first set out. As dominos, the group went into more and more panic until it was sheer chaos.  The screamed things like, “I bet it was one of those slimy guards.” And, “We outta kill whoever did this.” These statements shook the very threads of order we had. As all of this was being screamed my soldiers looked to me to maintain order.

I told my soldiers to maintain order in the calmest way possible and to guide the refugees to sleep, after that we would wake the individuals who were near that person one by one and collect data as to what they saw/heard/etc. They were then to report it to me and after that when Amare came back He, Zu Lieben and I were to figure out who it was, why they did it, and most importantly, what to do with them. We had to have so judicial system or else murder would only continue. Who would’ve thought that in this time where we have to fight off man-eating giants, our first casualty in days would be from a human?

As this was happening, we saw Amare come in for a landing. I explained what had happened. Expecting him to freak out in an emotional rampage he simply asked, “Well Commander, what is the plan?”

I explained it to him and he went to do his own investigation.


End file.
